Kartography

by Kamila Shamsie

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  KARTOGRAPHY

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2014 by Itzy

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Shamsie, Kamila, 1973—

  Kartography/Kamila Shamsie.—1st. U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-15-101010-2

  ISBN 0-15-602973-1 (pbk).

  1. Karachi (Pakistan)—Fiction. 2. Separation (Psychology)—Fiction. 3. Pakistanis—England—Fiction. 4. London (England)—Fiction. 5. Immigrants—Fiction. 6. Friendship—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PR9540.9.S485K37 2003

  823'.914—dc21 2003004989

  First published in the U.K. by Bloomsbury Publishing

  eISBN 978-0-547-54112-9

  v1.0513

  For all my Karachi friends,

  All over the world—

  In particular,

  Asad Haider and Tushna Kandawalla.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank all the usual suspects. In addition, I must mention:

  Agha Shahid Ali, for insisting I ‘do something’ with the image of the spinning globe.

  Zain Mustafa, for drives through Karachi, and lunar streets.

  Rehana Hakim, for giving me access to the Newsline archives.

  Zerxes Spencer, for the stream of post-midnight e-mails which kept me company while I was at work on the first draft of this novel.

  Aisha Rahman and Deepak Sathe, for the sofa-bed.

  Marian McCarthy, for understanding where this book could go, and insisting I take it there.

  It would be impossible to mention all the books, articles and websites I consulted while working on this novel. But I would like to mention the following, which were of particular help.

  Ali, Tariq. Can Pakistan Survive? Verso, 1983.

  Baillie, Alexander F. Kurrachee Past, Present and Future. Oxford, 1975.

  Cosgrove, Denis (ed.), Mappings. Reaktion Books, 1999.

  Lari, Yasmeen and Mihail S. The Dual City: Karachi During the Raj. Oxford, 1996.

  . . .

  The globe spins. Mountain ranges skim my fingers; there is static above the Arabian Sea. Pakistan is split in two, but undivided. This world is out of date.

  Rain outside. If it reaches Karachi, the waves will swell further. The airport, though, is inland. From there to here is no distance at all if you look at the map of the world. But distance is not about miles and kilometres, it is about fear. Who said that? Someone who wasn’t married to a pilot, I’d guess. I unscrew a jar of ink. Scent of smudged words and metal fills the air.

  Do all tentacled creatures produce ink, Raheen? Does the cuttlefish? Can you write on the waves with cuttleink?

  I close my eyes, and wrap my fingers around a diamond-shaped bone. I still hear the world spinning. I spin with it, spin into a garden. At dusk. And yes, those are shoulder pads stitched into my shirt.

  1986.

  . . .

  Of course the garden is located where all our beginnings, Karim’s and mine, are located: Karachi. That spider-plant city where, if you know what to look for and some higher power is feeling indulgent, you might find a fossilized footprint of Alexander. The Great. He led his army through Karachi, long, long before the spider-plant effect took hold, when Karachi was a harbour named Krokola. Perhaps Alexander’s was the first army that stirred up the sand along the eastern coast of the Arabian Sea.

  That’s an interesting thought.

  Though, really, it’s never been proved that Karachi is Krokola, and even if it is Alexander probably never stepped foot on its shores; so any ancient Macedonian footprints with heelstamps of authority in Karachi’s rocks must belong to Alexander’s admiral, Nearchus, who wasn’t even Macedonian. He was a Cretan and that sounds rude.

  I don’t know if Karim and I were actually looking for ancient footsteps in the rockery of Karim’s garden that October evening, the day all boxes were unpacked and the move from Karim’s old house finally completed, but I do know that we were more than happy with our discovery of a fossilized cuttlefish.

  ‘You sure it’s a cuttlefish?’ I said, turning the diamond-shaped fossil over in my hands. We were sitting cross-legged, side by side, on the grass that bordered the triangle of soil on which the rockery had been set out. Mud on his knees and chlorophyll on mine, though as we sat close, swaying back with laughter and forward with curiosity, the colours were mingling, dun shot through with emerald.

  “Course it is. Well, cuttlebone. No sign of fish flesh on that thing.’

  ‘So flesh is what makes a fish a fish?’

  ‘Interesting question. Is a sole without flesh still a sole? Either way, a cuttlefish isn’t a fish at all.’ Karim waved his arms about like someone trying to breakdance. ‘It’s got tentacles.’

  He fell back on his elbows, nearly flattening an ant, which, impervious, did not waver from its path but crawled over his arm and proceeded along through the short-cropped grass. ‘Imagine it.’ He looked around. ‘This used to be an ocean. If you squint, can’t you almost see Mai Kolachi rowing a boat through the hibiscus in search of her husband, and look! over there, through the bougainvillaea you can see a wave made up of the tears Alexander wept for Bucephalus.’

  ‘“Bucephalus” is an anagram for “a puce blush”. When I squint, I see only a blur.’

  Karim rolled his eyes. ‘You know, if I wasn’t me, you wouldn’t be you.’

  Odd. No matter where I begin, that line finds its way into my narrative so very early on, and forces linearity to give way to a ramble of hindsight. This is the worst of our ways of remembering—this tendency to prod the crust of anecdote in the hope of releasing a gush of piping-hot symbolism.

  Stop, Karim would say. Go and eat something. And look up ‘symbolism’ in the dictionary while you’re at it. Symbolism is an anagram for ‘Miss my lob’. The summer we played tennis together there was such symbolism in your game.

  Karim, shut up. While you weren’t looking I’ve melded the memories into a story beginningmiddlend, and don’t you dare interrupt with your version of what-really-came-first and that-was-cause-not-effect.

  Goodness, girlio, wouldn’t dream of it. Chronology is all about effect. Which is why you should have started at the point...

  Karim!

  Proceed.

  All right. Dusk...shoulder pads...cuttlefish... My parents pulling up in the driveway, and Karim’s father—Uncle Ali—coming out to join them for tea, his tie immaculately knotted and the creases of his trousers so sharp they would have mowed the grass if he had rolled across the garden. That’s a ridiculous thing to say, though. Imagine Uncle Ali deigning to roll.

  ‘Oh, you really look like someone who’s been unpacking boxes all day,’ my mother said with a laugh, sitting down on a cane chair, her palm outstretched towards Uncle Ali as though proffering him a tray of teacups. ‘Hanh, I know. The house is a mess, but your dressing room is tiptop and shipshape.’

  Uncle Ali didn’t smile. ‘Such an optimistic move, buying a house.’

  I caught my parents exchanging worried glances. ‘What a silly remark, Ali,’ my mothe
r said.

  ‘What’s silly about it? The factory area is still under curfew. No sign of it lifting.’

  ‘Oh, optimistic that way,’ my father said, and then shut up because my mother kicked him.

  I looked across at Karim to see if he knew what was going on, but he was gripping the cuttlebone tight, trying to imprint his palm with its scarred surface.

  ‘Things are just so awful,’ Uncle Ali went on. ‘God only knows when the kids’ school will open again.’

  Karim and I tried to look sombre, but my father caught us touching toe to toe in delight.

  ‘You’re more than happy that the riots are continuing, right?’ Aba said.

  ‘Well, it’s not...’ I said.

  ‘That we want more people to die or anything,’ Karim went on. ‘But...’

  ‘But it wouldn’t hurt if things remained...’

  ‘Tense.’

  ‘Just long enough for exams to be cancelled.’

  ‘Quickly make as many idiotic statements like that as are necessary for a lifetime,’ my father said. ‘You’re almost old enough to know better. What is it? October? By January we’re going to start expecting moral responsibility of you both.’ Aba shifted sideways as he spoke and looped his legs over the arm of the chair, his every muscle conveying the indolence of a well-satisfied man. He could probably drape himself over a barbed-wire fence and still look entirely at ease.

  Ami crooked a finger through the hole near the cuff of Aba’s jeans. I had asked her once if it bothered her that Aba was so totally unromantic, and she replied that her definition of romance was absent-minded intimacy, the way someone else’s hands stray to your plate of food.

  I looked at my parents for a moment. My father was pushing at Ami’s chair with his bare foot, pretending he was about to tip it over, and she gave him a look—one of those officious looks of hers—and he winked at me and subsided. I winked back with my smaller, darker version of his cat eyes (‘Tiger eyes’, he and I would always insist. ‘Panther eyes.’). We were co-conspirators, my father and I, though it was never entirely clear to me what we were conspiring about. Beside me, Karim started humming under his breath, so I turned back to the conversation to figure out what objectionable thing Uncle Ali was saying.

  ‘What am I more afraid of: that one day my son will get caught up in the troubles, or that he’ll never get caught up in it at all? You know, I seriously think sometimes that I should just write to my brother and...’

  Karim lay back and locked the tips of his fingers in a cradle for his head, but despite his attempt at nonchalance I could see the palms of his hands pressed tight against his ears, and I could hear the humming grow louder.

  ‘Hey!’ I prodded him. ‘Dekho!’

  Karim’s mother stepped out through the sliding glass doors of the TV room, and Karim and I exchanged raised-eyebrow looks because her hair was a shade lighter than it had been an hour earlier, bringing it to almost-chestnut. Ever since she’d found those magazines under Karim’s bed she had taken to dyeing her hair every time she tried to make an important decision regarding her son, and now she was blinking rapidly and clearing her throat, signalling that she was about to say something that she wasn’t sure she should.

  ‘Laila called a little while ago, just back from her honeymoon, says it was the best of the three so far. But she’s feeling a little aisay-waisay, you know, trying to settle down to life on Asif’s farm. So, and, darlings’—she turned to my parents here—‘I didn’t give an answer, because I said we must all consult, though I know what my vote is and I’m prepared to get assertive about it, but what she said was we should all come to the farm to keep her company, which is, of course, ridiculous because ad agencies and linen factories and newspaper magazines don’t just run themselves and you’ve both taken more than enough time off this year what with the trek up North and I have to be here for my cousin’s wedding, but she also said, and here’s the part that we need to talk about, she said that over the winter holidays we should send the kids to her.’

  Karim and I curled our lips at each other. A farm! For God’s sake, a farm! For two smogsniffers. Karachiites, damn it, who had things planned in the city for the winter holidays. Going crabbing and hanging out at Baleji Beach and driving to the airport for coffee, the world full of possibilities now that one of our crowd—Zia—drove, and the rest of us had chipped in with birthday and Eid money to buy him a driver’s licence that claimed he was born in 1967, before the moon landing, before the Civil War of ’71, before my mother and Karim’s mother swapped fiancés and wondered why they hadn’t earlier.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Maheen.’ Ami absent-mindedly pulled petals of Raat-ki-Rani off the string of white buds that held her hair in a bun, rubbed the petals between her palms and spread her hands, releasing a musky scent which would hover around her for hours. My father once swore that Ami could climb into a vat of rotting rubbish and, if there were a single gladiolus amid the mess of eggshells, mould, mango peel, chicken gizzards and last week’s dinner, Ami would emerge smelling as though she’d just sprayed on a perfume with a sense of humour.

  ‘Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea,’ Aunty Maheen said, drawing her tiny frame to its full height. ‘And it’s my turn to be right.’

  ‘But, sadly, she keeps missing her turn,’ Uncle Ali said to my father.

  I started to laugh, but stopped when I saw Aba kick Uncle Ali’s chair and incline his head towards Karim. Karim was resolutely looking away from his parents. Perhaps he hadn’t even heard his father’s comment. But then he put his hand up to his cheek and I knew he did it to hide his clenched jaw. I wanted to tell him acerbity was just Uncle Ali’s manner; it didn’t mean anything. So I pulled a fistful of grass out of the ground and blew the green blades in his direction. He turned towards me when he heard me exhale, and caught a scattering of grass on his palm. I moved closer to him and started to rearrange the grass strands into a grid for noughts and crosses.

  ‘Oho.’ Ami clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘You can afford to think it’s wonderful, Maheen, because you have a son, and now you’re going to force me to use the dreaded phrase “what will people say?” Suno, yaar, Karim and Raheen are almost...no, oh khuda, they are teenagers. To send the two of them alone...buss, now don’t give me that look!’

  I thought she was talking to me, but it was Uncle Ali who answered. ‘Don’t be absurd, Yasmin. They’re virtually cousins. In fact, they are cousins. You and I are third cousins, so that means our children are related, too. Tell that to the gossipmongers.’

  ‘Hey, cuz,’ Karim said. He blew on the grass strands and they flew on to my face.

  ‘We’re third cousins-in-law,’ Ami said. ‘No actual blood relation. I thought you’d be on my side, Ali.’

  ‘I have to sit down,’ Aunty Maheen said. ‘The husband is agreeing with me.’

  ‘I don’t think it’ll do Karim much good to be here, the way things are now.’ Uncle Ali sipped his tea and didn’t look at his wife. I looked at Karim again. He was staring up at the sky, slipping away.

  ‘He’s having one of his Doomsday visions,’ Ami cut in quickly. ‘He wants the kids away from Karachi.’

  ‘We can’t afford to do that,’ Aba said. ‘If you send them away because it’s too dangerous, how do you justify bringing them back?’

  ‘It’s only for the holidays,’ Uncle Ali said. ‘They run wild during the holidays. It just won’t be much fun for them if we say they can’t go anywhere, do anything. And it’ll be a nice break for them to have all Asif’s vast acreage to frolic in.’

  ‘But we want to frolic at the beach,’ I objected.

  ‘Much too dangerous driving out all that way,’ Ami said. ‘Ali, you may have a point. There’s a lot of fun to be had at Asif’s farm. Well, there was fifteen years ago.’

  When Ami said that, it seemed to me Aunty Maheen started to look at my father, then looked away and sighed. ‘Maybe things will get better by December.’ She rested h
er head on my mother’s shoulder. ‘When will this country learn?’

  Uncle Ali leaned sideways in his chair and looked at his wife. ‘This is not history repeating itself, Maheen. A military government such as ours can never rule a country that’s united. Not for any length of time. They can’t afford to allow any group to get powerful enough to instigate a mass movement. That’s what it’s about this time.’

  ‘You choose to believe that all the trouble is artificially created, don’t you, Ali?’ Aunty Maheen sat up and glared at her husband. ‘That makes things much easier for all of us in our civilized drawing rooms, doesn’t it, because then it’s only about the government, or the intelligence agencies, or even the Hidden Palm?——’

  ‘Hand,’ Uncle Ali said.

  ‘Oh, be quiet.’

  ‘I think he was trying to reassure you, Maheen,’ Aba said.

  ‘Ali, she has a point,’ Ami said, at the same time.

  ‘I don’t need reassuring. Why can’t he understand that? Why do the two of you always have to explain my husband and me to each other?’

  Karim was in another world, watching the clouds wisp past. Was he more of a dreamer than I was because his parents fought all the time? For a second I was almost jealous of the clouds. Why was he looking to them for escape when I was right here beside him? I twitched his sleeve, and he turned instantly to me, something close to relief on his face when I motioned him to follow me.

  We crawled away from our parents and I squeezed myself into the narrow space between the boundary wall and the spreading hibiscus plant. Karim had to suck in his stomach to follow. The sun had trouble reaching this patch in which we crouched, knees drawn up to chin, and the mud was still damp from the mali’s round with the garden hose earlier in the evening. I wondered if Karim was also recalling that long-ago monsoon day when we had hidden in the bushes of my grandmother’s house; I had pointed out that my mother said that if you stand around in wet clothes you’ll catch a chill, so in the interests of good health we had thrown all our clothing in a pile and: ‘That’s so funny-looking, Karim. Can I hold it? Can you make it move?’ ‘No, but I can wiggle my ears.’